notes of the day

Two different approaches to the process of addition 

analytic approach to addition _

whole as a summation/(better) subdivision, of/in proportional parts
form as a composition of modular elements

strict form

synthetic approach to addition _

whole as an incremental addition of scaled similarities, from integer to infinitesimal
form as emergence of a processuality within a structure
differentiation within repetition

free form  [paradigm of formal revolution]

An epiphany of the oblique

Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, Studies on oblique space;
Architecture Principe, 1966

BRT Architekten, Dockland Office Building;
 Hamburg, 2006

Abbastanza raramente mi incontro con l'architettura. 

Molto spesso mi incontro con  l'edilizia, con milioni di metri cubi di stanze tutte uguali, con una porta e una finestra, ammassate in tanti mucchi che arrivano anche a ottanta metri di altezza e certe volte anche a cento e forse a cento e cinquanta metri. Non so bene. 

Quelle montagne di stanze tutte uguali mi fanno molta impressione perchè mi sembra che su quelle montagne ci sia molto poca pietà per la gente che le deve scalare. 

Qualche volta mi incontro con sculture enormi, un pò come le sculture di Antoine Pevsner ma enormi, grandi come case e qualche volta mi incontro anche con "Acrobatiche opere di ingegneria". Così le chiamano. 

Abbastanza raramente mi incontro con l'architettura, quella che prova ad avvolgere con cura il mio corpo e la mia molto fragile anima. 

[E. Sottsass]

Quite rarely I meet with the architecture.

Very often I meet with the building industry, with millions of cubic feet of room all the same, with a door and a window, piled in heaps, which also come to eighty meters high and sometimes even a hundred and perhaps a hundred and fifty meters. I don't know.

Those mountains of rooms all the same disturb me because I think that on those mountains there is very little pity for the people who must climb.

Sometimes I meet with huge sculptures, a bit like the sculptures of Antoine Pevsner but huge, as big as houses, and sometimes I meet with "Acrobatic engineering works". So they call them.

Quite rarely I meet with the architecture, one that tries to wrap with care my body 

and my very fragile soul.

[E. Sottsass]

I Sabati dell'Architettura - Aaron Betsky

Biennale 2010 _ Giardini

Tom Sachs _ modular man

Andrés Jaque Architectos_FRAY FOAM HOME, when interior decoration goes political!!!

Andrea Branzi _ new athens charta

Do ho Suh + Suh architects _ blue print

 

Rietveld Landscape _ vacant NL

Czech Republic _ natural architecture

Canada, Philip Beesley_ holozoyc ground

Hungary _ borderline

Serbia _ seesaw play-grow

The man to call when modernism loses its erection

Charles Renfro 

BW: Are there good places for the students to have sex?
CR: Well, they're a little open. But arent't we supposed not to talk about sex?
BW: Are you kidding? This is PIN-UP magazine!
Cr: [Laughs] Okay, well I guess you could penetrate back and forth, and there's a lot of gazing back and forth, a lot of spatial penetration. You can do with the building what you want. We're trying to make it a sort of holodeck: loft spaces where you can realize your fantasies. There's been a lot of discussion in the architectural world about the ability of a building to engineer behavior. There was a lot of pseudoscientific social research started in the 70s that is being rethought with more interest in is sensual less objective, and more subjective aspects. How can architecture in the public realm promote behavior that's spontaneous and unplanned? [...]

[C. Renfro talking about Brown University's new Creative Arts Center, interviewed by B. Widdicombe on PIN-UP magazine]